1. Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure relates generally to telecommunications, more specifically to caller-identification facilitated approaches the preserving the privacy of a party to a telephonic communication.
2. Background
The telecommunications revolution has facilitated effortless voice and data communication globally, but at a cost to personal privacy. Many telephonic systems are available that did not exist a generation ago, such as smart phones, cellular networks, and voice-over-internet (all of which are referred to as “telephones” in this disclosure). However, technologies have also advanced for obtaining information about the participants of telephone conversations without their consent.
A caller's phone number and the location at which the number is registered can be revealed using caller identification (“caller ID”). Coupling caller ID with reverse-lookup databases can reveal the caller's name and address, which in turn can be used to discover more personal information about the caller. When calling from a non-mobile telephone, the caller ID information can be used to pinpoint the caller's geographic location. Caller ID is a boon to those who wish to know whether they can trust the originator of a call, but it is a bane to those who wish to use their telephones without surrendering private information to everyone they call.
Telephones are vulnerable to other forms of invasive data collection as well. Voice recognition and analysis systems can be used to identify a party to a phone conversation and to gather biometric information about the party without that party's knowledge or consent. Background sounds can be analyzed to establish the personal location of the party. Furthermore, the popularity of mobile telephones gives unwanted callers the ability to intrude on anyone carrying a telephone wherever they may be.
Although many telephones have caller ID capabilities, during the brief ring period it is difficult to assess whether the number that appears on the telephone belongs to a party with whom the telephone owner wishes to speak, or whether it belongs to an unknown or hostile party. Should a hostile or untrusted party (“unpopular party”) succeed in connecting, that party can use any of the methods detailed above to attempt to obtain non-public information about the telephone owner.
Most telephone service providers offer their subscribers the ability to block certain calls. When someone tries to dial in from a blocked number, a message is received that they have been blocked. Although this achieves the goal of preventing a call from being connected from an unpopular party, it is not a viable option if one wishes to communicate in some limited way with the unpopular party, but with some level of privacy protection in place. For example, a person fleeing from a domestic abuse situation may wish to avoid receiving a call from the abuser without alerting the abuser to the fact that he has been blocked. Therefore a need exists for a way to rapidly identify an unpopular party to a telephone conversation and automatically modify the call to activate a privacy security measure.